This week’s top stories may lead you to change your wake-up time, rethink how you answer emails, and get through meetings more painlessly.

This week we learned what it’s like to answer emails using Google’s new Smart Reply feature, how to survive a whole day of meetings, and why your productivity hinges on how long it takes you to wake up.

Many of us would agree that it’s important to sort out what motivates us. That’s how we choose career paths and decide what opportunities to go after. But new research is showing that “intrinsic motivation” has a more immediate impact as well–namely, on productivity.

Jess Lee, CEO of Polyvore, explains why she supports her employees’ own entrepreneurial ambitions this way: “You just have to accept that great talent—a lot of times they’ll just graduate into doing their own thing. So rather than trying to fight it, I think you should just cultivate it.”

Google rolled out Smart Reply a month ago. The feature lets Google Inbox users choose among three basic, automatically generated responses rather than tapping personalized own responses. To put it to the test, one writer answered emails exclusively using Smart Reply for an entire week. Here’s what he learned.

Most of us require around seven to eight hours of sleep each night to feel rested the next day, but it’s tough to hit that sweet spot every single night. This week we learned why getting the most out of your day starts by understanding how long it takes you to overcome “sleep inertia,” that sluggish feeling that makes you want to keep hitting the snooze button.

One recent survey found that 50% of professionals have two to five meetings every week, and that number climbs the higher your place in the pecking order. This week we learned a few ways to navigate a calendar jam-packed with meetings and make it out alive.